Mormon killers embraced as heroes

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Mormon killers embraced as heroes
KTUV-TV 2 Salt Lake City |
"Reverence from some for the darker side of the Mormon history doesn't start or end with [Orrin Porter Rockwell]... Earlier this spring, [John D. Lee] was nearly memorialized with a statue in Washington, Utah. City council members voted 3-2 to not put up the statue of a city founder that they had already paid $35,000 for, but that came after two earlier votes to erect the statue in front of a museum. Brian Wilson, chair of the comparative religion department at Western Michigan University, said it's perhaps difficult for the LDS faithful to create mythological heroes because the religion is so young. 'Part of the problem is these are figures that are very well historically documented,' he said. 'It's kind of difficult to clean up or sweep under the rug those elements that in the construction of an ideal hero you'd like to see go away... The Mormon church as an organization, and the Mormon people themselves, love the myth but hate the history.'"